Heavily redacted versions of ArriveCan documents submitted to a House of Commons committee in December 2022 are “blocking” MPs’ investigation into the app’s $54 million price tag, says Conservative MP Kelly McCauley, who is also the committee’s chair.
“I’m very greatly concerned that documents are redacted, blocking any ability for us to see what the government was actually buying and how many units. All we get is a lump-sum price,” McCauley told The
Globe and Mail.
“I suspect the committee will probably put through another motion demanding unredacted documents.”
Government contracts and development costs associated with the ArriveCan app are currently being investigated by the Commons Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates (OGGO), which began its study on the matter in October 2022.
The
committee on Oct. 17 requested that the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) release lists of ArriveCan subcontractors and invoices by Oct. 31, but the federal agency missed the deadline due to delays in translating the invoices.
CBSA president Erin O’Gorman told the committee on Nov. 14 that the agency did not have lists of the subcontractors who worked on ArriveCan.
“We just have information relating to those who held the contract directly with either CBSA or PSPC [Public Services and Procurement Canada],” she said.
O’Gorman’s comments came nearly two weeks after a majority of MPs in the House on Nov. 2
voted in favour of Auditor General Karen Hogan conducting an in-depth review of the federal government’s $54 million spending on the app.
Liberal MP Anthony Housefather, a member of the OGGO committee studying the costs and parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Public Services and Procurement,
told the Globe that he believes CBSA should provide documents that give unredacted descriptions of the services provided by individual contractors.
“We should have a clear view of what exactly was being paid for in each case, and I would be supportive of a request to receive that information in an unredacted format,” Housefather said. “Provided that any commercially confidential information ... would be kept confidential by the Committee and not be made public.”
Committee Work
The OGGO committee has yet to question federal ministers about the ArriveCan costs after a motion that McCauley introduced in October was revised to remove the section calling for at least five ministers to appear before the committee and face questions.McCauley
told The Epoch Times in a previous interview that the decision was “a blow to transparency.”
“It’s another kick in the face to taxpayers who have to cough up all this money for a relatively small app,” he said on Oct. 17.
The CBSA said in a previous email that the government spent only $80,000 on creating and launching the ArriveCan app in April 2020. The total price tag increased to $54 million because of operations and maintenance, upgrades, technical support, and other requirements over the last two years, said CBSA spokesperson Sandra Boudreau.
“ArriveCAN is not a simple information sharing app, its a secure transactional tool that used industry standards,” she wrote on Oct. 17.
MPs on the Commons
OGGO committee questioned former CBSA president John Ossowski on Dec. 8 about ArriveCan costs and contracts.
Ossowski, who served as CBSA president from
2016 until
June 2022, told the committee that he was unsure if initial development work on ArriveCan was done in-house or contracted out of the department.
“Could the version that we have today have been made for less money?” asked Conservative MP
Michael Barrett.
“If we were to look back at it, I’m sure there might be some stuff that the department would be willing to hear about as we go forward,” Ossowski replied.
“With the benefit of hindsight, I would say that we were moving very quickly.”
